One thing I’m starting to observe here in Guatemala is that one assumption I often have when traveling to countries like this is wrong in a lot of ways.

I don’t think I’m alone that my gut reaction to the Global South is that they do not have any access to a lot of things we take for granted in countries like the US.

That may be true of some things, like Patrick Bateman’s favorite restaurants, but many things we assume they don’t have access to we miss the point.

There are a lot of basic things that are accessible in a lot of places, they’re just not as easy to get to. For example, when I talked to a lot of people about my extended stay in Guatemala this year a common reaction was “Enjoy the cold showeres!”

I present to you what has been called by Guatemalan travelers “the widow maker.”

That is my shower head. Well not really my shower head. I pulled the picture from Google Images since I haven’t gotten my own pictures available to upload in the internet cafe I use.

Notice the yellow and green electric cord running from the wall to the top of the shower head? Those are yellow and green electric cords running to the top of the shower head.

How does it work? Those cords pump 220V to the water that accumulates in the shower head’s reservoir to heat the water as it pours out. There is no temperature dial like we have in the US, but by adjusting the water pressure you can make the water hotter or colder…the less water forced into the reservoir is more easily heated by the electricity. The lower the water pressure warner the water.

Sometimes the water can be shockingly hot. I don’t mean hot because even at its hottest it’s almost-kind of-a-little-bit warm but is normally just a pleasant temperature of “not cold.” What I do mean is that the water is shocking. If you touch the metal dial to adjust the water pressure after you’ve entered the stream you get a shock. If like my shower your soap is wet on the metal soap-rack hanging from the metal water pipe to the electric shower head, you get a pretty big shock. If you actually touch the shower head while it’s on and you’re in the water you get a seriously huge shock.

Don’t do that last one. It’s seriously a huge shock.

Those basic things we assume they don’t have access to they do have access to. There are just a few extra steps with a few extra electrifying trade-offs that we don’t have to deal with most of the time.

I’ll let you decide if it’s better to have access to something like not-cold water with the extra danger, or to not have access at all. That’s the point for me. Not that they have no access, but the extra steps and dangers associated with getting access.

UPDATE:
You can get reservations to Dorsia now with just a few extra steps…like a plane ticket to London. They will also be serving the sea urchin ceviche. How to get a reservation: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2011-04/18/gq-food-dorsia-restaurant-bar-american-psycho-london

I had wanted to start this blog with a well-written and well thought out reason why I would put off law school and everything else in my life to come down here to Guatemala.

The easy answer is that I’m not putting anything off.

The easy answer still doesn’t deal with why…the reason for it.

I had thought that perhaps this would be some sort of treatise explanation, a Preface to Life in Guatemala. I put off writing this because I wanted it to be good, logical and principled.

I’ve finally decided to stop putting it off because there is no good principle or framework for why I’m here.

Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.

       -Mathis, from Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale

That’s really the only answer I can think of.

I had originally planned on writing this post and the next one before I left. I got behind on packing though so that didn’t work out. So where I’m going has turned in to where I am.

I realize that a lot of people don’t know much about Guatemala. Being so close to Mexico most Americans are more concerned with Mexico, or places further away. Guatemala rests in that in-between place so easy to look over. Before I give posts about what I’m doing here or why I’m here, it may be helpful to know a little more about what here is.

I also want to provide a few caveats before I continue. Guatemala is a country rife with conflict, poverty and lack of development. It is very, very easy to focus on those problems and ignore the rich cultural and ethnic history that continues to thrive in Guatemala. It is truly a beautiful country with friendly, hard-working people and these positives need to be highlighted far more often than they are. I hope this blog as whole will highlight those positives. For this post, however, I’m going to fall in to the rut that so many other peope and paint a pretty stark picture. While it’s bad to focus on the bad and ignore the many wonderful things about Guatemala, it would be ignorant to focus on political correctness in such a way as to ignore the serious issues that face it. So this post will focus on the bad, but the blog will (attempt at) focusing on the good and ways to address these problems.

Guatemala has one of the highest homicide rates in all of the Americas averaging about 17 murders per day, with much more violent crime concentrated in the capital city.

The country also has one of the lowest rates of incarceration at 28 prisoners per 100,000 people. The average criminal trial lasts more than four years with less than 2 percent of crimes resulting in conviction

It’s well-known that throughout the 20th century many Latin- and South-American countries experienced widespread violence and unrest. Guatemala was the only of those countries to experience genocide.

According to the UN-sponsored truth commission report released in 1999, more than 200,000 people died or disappeared as a result of the armed conflict, of which more than 80 percent were Maya. The report also establishes that 93 percent of these human rights violations can be connected to the state.

Those are huge numbers, and many people welcome the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala as an end to the significant violence that obviously occurs during internal war. In terms of violence and security things haven’t gotten much better. They may be worse.

The number of homicides jumped 40 percent from 2001 to 2004 and continues to rise. In 2005, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported that Guatemala had the highest murder rate in Latin America. Guatemala City’s homicide rate - one of the highest in urban Latin America - is 109 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, nearly eleven times the rate labeled a “crisis” by the World Health Organization…Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that Guatemala’s current homicide rate far exceeds the avergae number of Guatemalans killed each year as a result of political violence during the armed conflict.

There is also a gendered slant to the violence today.

Of more than six hundred cases of women reported murdered in 2005, only two convictions had been handed down last year (2003 I think - Tony). Even so, the numbers given above are likely lower than the country’s actual crime rates.

It´s not just violence, it´s poverty and a lack of education to get out of it.

…nearly 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line and one in five people live in extreme poverty. Guatemala, along with Brazil and South Africa, has the most unequal income distribution in the world. The education system has left the country with the highest illiteracy rate in the Americas after Haiti; 65 percent of indigenous women are illiterate.

The realities of Guatemala post-civil war continue. There´s a lot more out there about its economy, health system, educational system, the plight of the indigenous people, impacts of urbanization, etc. I pull all of the quotes above from one book that has an obvious focus on insecurity and violence. It’s a great read though and does a lot to look at the way urban life and rural life in Guatemala are flip-flopping. For instance, during the civil war most of the violence occurred in the rural areas, especially in the north. Now a vast majority of the violence is happening in Guatemala City and the rural areas, while grossly undeveloped, are comparatively more peaceful.

The book is Securing the City: Neoliberalism, Space, and Insecurity in Postwar Guatemala edited by Kevin Lewis O’Neill and Kedron Thomas. It’s filled with internal citations that I cut out in my above quotes. This is a blog, not an academic paper. The link takes you to the Amazon page on the book.

I’ve never written a blog before and I don’t read many so whatever convention there is about the first blog post of a new blog I’m not familiar with it. I’d assume it gives a clear and concise purpose of the blog and its target audience. This post doesn’t do either very well, but it kind of does both. I’ve never been good at thesis statements.
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One of my favorite movies growing up was 1978’s Heaven Can Wait. Joe Pendleton, quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams (‘78 was a long time ago), is killed by an angel before his time right before a season he’s favored to win the Super Bowl. Pendleton, like everyone else, is going to die eventually. Before that Pendleton has things to do…like win the Super Bowl. And even after death that’s exactly what he does because Heaven, for Pendleton, can wait.

There are two things I get from the movie. At least…there are two things relevant to what I’m about to do with my life. The first is that Pendleton isn’t seeking immortality or forsaking Heaven. After all, this isn’t Faustus. He’s merely putting it off to do something else before he embraces its inevitability at the proper time. The second follows from the first in that he isn’t putting it off because he’s nervous about it, or lazy, or ungrateful. He just has something better to do first.

For most people around me right now there is a path that is to be followed. High School -> College -> Graduate School -> Career -> Retirement.
It’s a respectable path that has a lot of security in its stability and its predictability. The problem is that each builds on the other and you don’t often get a chance to deviate and do something else.

It’s a path that I’m on. Unlike Mark Renton I didn’t have to go through a heroin addiction to

choose life,  the job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

Most people read lists and paths like that and either reject them or bow their heads and begrudgingly accept them. Neither is particularly positive or upbeat. There are more choices, however. It is possible to take the road less traveled by and later on in the road merge with the more traveled path, or double-back and redo it. If you’re smart about it and flexible.Thinking ahead you can easily add things into your path. Service and stability are not mutually exclusive.

Here’s my path for now.

High School -> College -> Internship -> Guatemala for a year -> Law School -> Career -> TBD

I’ve still got all of the traditional parts of the path that so many people hate. I don’t reject the stable path and I don’t begrudgingly accept it.  I just think that it can wait.